The future of pork processing. The future is going to continue to be people business, there will be automation, tools, AI, there will be lots of things. But as I think about our business, take newspapers. In theory, AI can write all those, but I don’t think it’d do a very good job. I think that we’re going to need people to add their own judgment, their skill, and here we’ll come up with different tools to make jobs easier, make them more effective, to help identify risks better. But fundamentally, I think it’s going to take people to make sure that we feed all the demands of this growing world, and so setting ourselves up to support people who are ready to develop their careers is really what I think that future is for pork and agriculture in general. Adapting to consumer trends. You never really know where everything is going to go. I think again, bacon came. There’s different concepts as we take a look at nutrition, I see a lot of podcasts and you know, there’s different times when someone says, well, you should take this supplement, you should take that supplement. But something resonates to me: As much as we know, we don’t really know everything, and that interaction of elements core to our diet, we don’t really know what we’re missing. We don’t know if there’s other elements in complex polysaccharides, proteins or otherwise we get in meat and the vegetables or foods that we have that help sustain us, help develop us, help our children grow. There’s a desire to make sure that we just stay focused on producing safe, nutritious food, pork among them, delivering high-quality food to those who need access and affordable food. I think a lot of times too, part of our challenge is, as we increasingly focus on different elements of diet, we end up pushing the costs of those up so that many people get priced out of the ability to afford safe food. Workforce development. It’s going to take investment, whether it’s training off-site or on the job. It’s important to figure out how you want to engage with your workforce. Here when we redid our purpose, we restated our values. Honesty, engagement, respect, excellence. Those spell out the word HERE, and I think in many ways, especially in a manufacturing environment, building the bond, we all have to pull on the rope together.
Nobody’s better than anybody. Everybody has a role to play, and we have to make investments in helping each individual, whether they’re production or management, do the best job that they can. Global expansion. You know, that one is a little bit more of a challenge, where to grow. There’s breadth, there’s getting involved in new activities, and there’s depth. I would tell you, despite 18 years of processing pork here at Triumph Foods, I still believe that there’s more depth that we can achieve just in our current operations. What we’ll target is somewhere where we think we can be excellent. So it’s not necessarily growth for growth’s sake. It gets back to that core farmer ethos of our members. When they achieved the wherewithal to produce their products, they didn’t just kind of keep expanding to expand — they invested in depth and what made sense at the time, and what really results in a sustainable difference from the whole value chain, something that we can get because we’re owned by farmers. So I don’t know where it is, but I do know Triumph is going to grow. Which we end on, your legacy and vision, Matt. We talked a little bit about sustainability and stewardship. This facility will be here long past my stewardship. And so the legacy that I’m interested in, really gets back to that purpose, and it gets back to the farmers, team members, and community. I want to know that I made a contribution in some way during the time that I was responsible for this team of men and women, that helped sustain the farmers and people out in rural communities that are doing the work, to send pigs to us every day. I know that Triumph Foods has an opportunity to make a positive, permanent impact on people’s lives who come here, learn, get trained, earn wages, put their kids through school, and I want St. Joseph to be known as a core for manufacturing, as a welcoming business environment. And I think to the extent that during my stewardship I can drive all those three things, when my stewardship is over, I’ll be able to look back — and that’s a legacy that I want to be proud of.
44
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online